Guide to Education Grants

Two articles on the attitudes of students toward debt caught our attention yesterday.   We all know of the students who seem to live by a two word motto when it comes to personal finance—“charge it!”—but there are many students out there who remain committed to paying for their education as they go, often to their detriment.  
An article in the January 31 LA Times  describes how many Latino students refuse to take out loans of any type, even federal student loans.  While a general aversion to debt is often considered the sign of a strong work ethic, many Latino students delay or never complete their studies as they attempt to save the money to pay for college with straight cash instead of compiling a package of loans and grants like many of their counterparts.  These loans, especially when subsidized or combined with grants and scholarships, are very effective tools in paying for a college education; an education that’s value will always be worth more than the cost of a student loan.
While the LA Times informed us of students who should take out loans to pay for college, USA Today offered a story on students who were certainly not averse to owing money, that’s for sure.  In addition to a survey, USA Today interviewed recent graduates, all with debt loads north of $20,000, to see how debt is affecting their lives and allowed the recent grads to provide current students with financial advice.  If there was one overriding theme from all of the recent grads, it was definitely “don’t spend so much money.”  Now we’ve all heard that before; but interestingly, if you look at the quotes from some of the featured recent grads, there is another theme:  the little things add up.  Check out these quotes from the story:
“If you can have a burner or toaster oven in your dorm room or live off campus, buy your own groceries and learn to cook. You’ll impress the females and save tons of money.”—Walter Chandler,  a 26 year old test propulsion engineer and a recent graduate of Embry Riddle Aeronautical University.
“Most debt is incurred on luxuries like eating out and fancy gadgets, not books and lab supplies. Those are just excuses we all make to justify our high debt load. (Also), buy the cheap Bud Light, not the expensive Newcastle.”—Brian Lee, a 27 year old pilot and a recent graduate of Cal State-Poly
Now I don’t know if boiling Ramen noodles or creating similar college culinary delicacies will help you as much with the opposite sex as it did for our pal Walter and I would definitely take Brian’s beer idea one step further and suggest Keystone, High Life, or—heaven help us—PBR as cheaper beverages for student consumption (editor’s note:  if you’re of age, of course), but these guys have the right idea, the little things do add when it comes to money and debt, especially when you factor in that nearly every merchant is willing to accept a credit card for even the smallest of purchases.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Education Funding News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.